Posts Tagged ‘lifestyle’

If you think you are smarter than everyone around you, you’re definitely not. If you have a colleague who thinks he is much better at his job than everyone, he is definitely not. Well, if you feel this way about yourself, or come across anyone who overestimates their own abilities the same way you do,…

I am asking my GOP friends to call or write their representatives and senators and tell them you are against rolling back or abolishing the Affordable Care Act and the new GOP tax iniative! Ask them instead to work across the aisle and make both better. We need healthcare that does not murder people so the rich can get richer. How is that Christian, if that is the standard you are using? But these attempts at getting rid of it come with nothing to replace it. This last bid to roll it back is designed specifically to hurt Blue states, but, and you can look this up, Red states are the poorest, most in need of education improvement, and have more people in poverty than blue states, by a large margin. So losing Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act will hurt them in very large numbers! We are talking about Republican voters, core Trump supporters. So all of these multiple attempts to get rid of the Affordable Care Act are because money ordered it! Yes the trillion dollar health insurance industry lobby who have bought and paid for politicians have said get rid of it, we do not want our massive profit margin screwed up by poor people, or the middle class for that matter! Now I myself do not depend on the Affordable Care Act or Medicaid, I have a great private insurance plan provided by Ma Bell plus Medicare! But I am not blind to the what or why that is going on with our healthcare in congress. Paid for politicians who serve money, not you or I, are responsible for taking needed care away from millions. Block grants, give me a break, the states that need the ACA and medicaid the most are so poor that any money they get from block grants will just be like throwing a cup of water in the ocean and expecting to see it rise. Tax reform, sure we need it, but reducing the taxes on the rich when they are already lower than anytime in history drives up the debt! Of course the GOP is preaching trickle down economics again, which has never worked! Ever! Please educate yourselves on this issue, it means the very lives of your children are at stake! If living healthy and even moderately comfortable lives for your children, grandchildren, even yourself, is important, than quit swallowing the swill big money dumps in your trough. And please get off the socialist kick! This has always been a socialist democracy. Police, fire, emergency services, hurricane and flood relief, all social programs. The list goes on and on. Could some be handled better, you bet, but that is where and how our attention needs to used, to make our system work better, not use it to make even more money for the top while the middle class shrinks, the povery level climbs, and education suffers. Convincing you to distrust media, science, education, and hate social programs is how they eventually enslave us. It is how every strongman dictatorship has evolved, it is why history is important. It is why, when all but .5% of scientists warn you that certain things are fact, not fiction, you need to pay attention. And be careful of non-science in your schools, your children will not be able to compete in the world without science, without an understanding of history, without civics. Do you know that most Red state voters, yes voters, cannot even name the three branches of our government! How the hell are they supposed to know when the hoodwinking begins if they do not understand how government works. The executive, for emergencies and national defense, the legislative too hold the executive accountable, make and pass laws, and the judiciary to hold both accountable to the constitution and We The People! None of that can work when money is worshipped over the constitution, or over the wishes of the People! Congress no longer votes as their constituency tells them, they are paid for politicians. Look at the agenda people, it does you and I no good at all. A tough talking adolescent is not what you need in the White House, mark my words, history will bear me out!

Please access and read the link provided, it will give you important information about what I am talking about!

You see the word dictatorship and immediately think of those other 24 countries in the world under a dictator! Well I am here to tell you that somebody in the White House thinks we should be one too! I say someone because I am not absolutely certain who it is that’s in charge! So let me remind you of how certain things have gone in the first few days of Trumps Presidency that make me think this might have weight!

Do not fool yourselves into thinking that this is not a serious discussion because it is way beyond serious! This is a disaster of epic proportions. Most recently our President was telling the military that the media is covering up terror attacks to make him look foolish! As if they could stay away from the type of news that increases viewership and rakes in the dough! You know where our esteemed leader got that information? He got it from avidly watching Alex Jones, you know that guy from Infowars! Yep the guy who says Sandy Hook never happened, that every law enforcement entity in the country and President Obama faked the whole thing! He also thinks that the Super Bowl halftime show by Lady Gaga was a message straight from the Goddess of Satan! Trump is, as I said an avid watcher and where he got the idea about media covering up terrorist attacks. It is a shame that we are now setting policy for the United States of American from information we got from a guy with a microphone, the internet, a few flat screens for a backdrop, and a garage to put them in! As a result Trump has been attacking the media as dishonest anytime they disagree with his alternate facts! He claims the polls were fixed; voting totals have been skewed in Hillary’s favor, I mean he thinks he actually won the popular vote! Now he is calling out the judiciary. Not for the first time, but it is getting worse. He is now labeling a federal judge a “so called” judge! He also put the blame for any attack on the U.S. directly on this man’s shoulders, giving him someone to blame when all this hate he spews backfires in his face! He might get this judge killed with his recklessness. At the very least it will garner him some threats! Trump, as any citizen, has the right to disagree, but he is calling out this man’s right to be a judge as President of the United States! Checks and balances of the office of the Presidency and political parties are a separate judiciary and an honest and engaged media! So if you want to be a dictator the first thing you do is surround yourself with a small cabal of cronies, you demote the people who are actually qualified to be making policy and could point out your flaws, then you attack the media and the judiciary! Look up any strongman regime past or present and that is how it has always been done! So now, for my part, I am trying to decide if Trump is trying to set himself up as a strongman dictator, or is his mental instability the problem? He definitely does not know what a democracy is! He does not know how to use the tools at his disposal because he cannot give up the absolute control he craves and use the CIA, the Pentagon, FBI, or Homeland! He wants to tell them what to do, and what conclusions to draw, basically castrating them! It will all end badly if we get lazy and quit. Those people that say he is our President now so let it alone and quit crying are dead wrong. It is our duty to hold an immoral mentally unstable man to the fires of truth, moral fiber, and national stability! All this constant spewing of hatred will sour our national resolve, change who we are at our core! Instead of the land of the free, we will be known as the land of the vindictive, the do as we say or suffer the big stick we swagger about with! Let’s not forget stay the hell out if you are not white and Christian!

Friday, October 28th ~ Tagus Cove, Urbina Bay, Isabela Island Day 3 ~ Before we take off on todays excursions, I wanted to share more information of what day-to-day life is like on board the Santa Cruz II. There are several primary large areas where meetings, or lectures, or meals can be served, the Panorama […]

I have tried a few times to put down on paper my thoughts on our economy and those of Canada, the British empire and northern European countries like Germany, for example. Robert Reich posted a recent blog, which explains it well, and all in one place, so I am going to reblog it here, and I quote; “For years Americans have assumed that our hard-charging capitalism is better than the soft-hearted version found in Canada and Europe. American capitalism might be a bit crueler but it generates faster growth and higher living standards overall. Canada’s and Europe’s “welfare-state socialism” is doomed. It was a questionable assumption to begin with, relying to some extent on our collective amnesia about the first three decades after World War II, when tax rates on top incomes in the U.S. never fell below 70 percent, a larger portion of our economy was invested in education than before or since, over a third of our private-sector workers were unionized, we came up with Medicare for the elderly and Medicaid for the poor, and built the biggest infrastructure project in history, known as the interstate highway system. But then came America’s big U-turn, when we deregulated, de-unionized, lowered taxes on the top, ended welfare, and stopped investing as much of the economy in education and infrastructure. Meanwhile, Canada and Europe continued on as before. Soviet communism went bust, and many of us assumed European and Canadian “socialism” would as well. That’s why recent data from the Luxembourg Income Study Database is so shocking. The fact is, we’re falling behind. While median per capita income in the United States has stagnated since 2000, it’s up significantly in Canada and Northern Europe. Their typical worker’s income is now higher than ours, and their disposable income – after taxes – higher still. It’s difficult to make exact comparisons of income across national borders because real purchasing power is hard to measure. But even if we assume Canadians and the citizens of several European nations have simply drawn even with the American middle class, they’re doing better in many other ways. Most of them get free health care and subsidized child care. And if they lose their jobs, they get far more generous unemployment benefits than we do. (In fact, right now 75 percent of jobless Americans lack any unemployment benefits.) If you think we make up for it by working less and getting paid more on an hourly basis, think again. There, at least three weeks paid vacation as the norm, along with paid sick leave, and paid parental leave. We’re working an average of 4.6 percent more hours more than the typical Canadian worker, 21 percent more than the typical French worker, and a whopping 28 percent more than your typical German worker, according to data compiled by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. But at least Americans are more satisfied, aren’t we? Not really. According to opinion surveys and interviews, Canadians and Northern Europeans are. They also live longer, their rate of infant mortality is lower, and women in these countries are far less likely to die as result of complications in pregnancy or childbirth. But at least we’re the land of more equal opportunity, right? Wrong. Their poor kids have a better chance of getting ahead. While 42 percent of American kids born into poor families remain poor through their adult lives, only 30 percent of Britain’s poor kids remain impoverished – and even smaller percentages in other rich countries. Yes, the American economy continues to grow faster than the economies of Canada and Europe. But faster growth hasn’t translated into higher living standards for most Americans. Almost all our economic gains have been going to the top – into corporate profits and the stock market (more than a third of whose value is owned by the richest 1 percent). And into executive pay (European CEOs take home far less than their American counterparts). America’s rich also pay much lower taxes than do the rich in Canada and Europe. But surely Europe can’t go on like this. You hear it all the time: They can no longer afford their welfare state. That depends on what’s meant by “welfare state.” If high-quality education is included, we’d do well to emulate them. Americans between the ages of 16 and 24 rank near the bottom among rich countries in literacy and numeracy. That spells trouble for the U.S. economy in the future. They’re also doing more workforce training, and doing it better, than we are. The result is more skilled workers. Universal health care is another part of their “welfare state” that saves them money because healthier workers are more productive. So let’s put ideology aside. The practical choice isn’t between capitalism and “welfare-state socialism.” It’s between a system that’s working for a few at the top, or one that’s working for just about everyone. Which would you prefer?” Conservatives have to be careful not to follow a lot of their constituents over a line that has not been drawn by them, but by well moneyed interests who have been telling them how to think. Liberals have to weed out the bleeding heart that wants everything regardless of the cost. There is a happy medium, one that a lot of countries have obviously found and are using to their advantage, and just as obvious that we are failing to do the same. So the message is, wise up!

I wonder what it would feel like to be 19 again. Would I be the man I was in 1968, or would I wear my ball cap sideways, my pants halfway down my butt crack, and would my face have shrapnel hanging from every orifice, maybe even an eyebrow or two in this day and age? If I was 19 again would I have joined the Marines, or would I have just hung out with my bitch, sippin whiskey and smokin dope, I mean nobody says I have to do jack!? If I were 19 again, would I have wanted to major in criminology, or maybe political science? Maybe instead, cause this would suit the bitch, the whiskey, and the dope way better, I would take courses with the idea of becoming an investment banker, or maybe trade on Wall Street and buy me one of those multi million dollar high rise apartments! Yeah that’s it! I could then buy better whiskey, better dope, and trade the bitch in on something a little more sleek and sexy, if only I were 19 again! Or maybe I would drop out; I mean I am smokin dope! Maybe I would, instead of becoming a policeman, be arrested by one, sent up the river and turned into someone else’s bitch while my new sleek and sexy bitch divorces my ass and takes everything I have, or ever will! Yeah that’s it, the Man done stuck it to me! Or if I had gone the way of Wall Street and so forth, I could buy off the man, or at least buy me a great lawyer, and continue on smokin dope and makin scratch. At least until my brain fried from my lifestyle or the economy tanked, or both! So what was I talking about, oh yeah, if I could be 19 again!

Wait! I have a loving wife, kindest and most generous person on the planet! I have the best daughter a man could ask for, who has her Masters and is a great English teacher! I have a nice little house in a quiet cul-de-sac, with a 4×4, 1900 twin V motorcycle all chromed out, and an SUV just for the wife! All except the house paid for by the way. My wife and I are both retired, I am travelling with friends around the country on bike trips, and my wife and I are planning some trips together! Lets see, don’t have to go to work in the morning, no boss to answer to, can pretty much come and go as I please, have plenty man toys and adequate wampum, well, hmm, ok then, never mind!